How creating a collaborative culture could benefit your startup

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Building a collaborative culture at your startup is a
great way to enhance your innovation, efficiency, and overall
chance of success, by encouraging information sharing and group
creativity. But where do you start? And what is important to
consider when creating open structures? Here are four important
things you should keep in mind.

1. Build an innovation platform.

In order to succeed in becoming a collaborative organization,
you cannot just think of yourself as a content provider. Instead,
you must see yourself as a curator; someone who creates a context
or a platform that allows other people to self-organize and create
things that are valuable, for you, for them and maybe even for the
world.

In the networked age, organizations can be much more
than organizations. They can be platforms for value creation that
encourage a large, diverse, capable network of contributors to
build open and intelligent networks and communities to solve shared
problems.

Collaboration is not just a way to optimize problem-solving; it
can also help edge out competition. If people are going
to hack your products anyway, then you may as well get ahead of the
game. Make your products modular, re-configurable and
editable. Supply the raw materials so that collaborators can add
value to your product and make it easier to remix and share. The
advantage is that you will always be able to count on a dynamic and
fertile ecosystem for growth and innovation.

But- don’t expect a free ride. Your collaborators will
not only expect shares in things they helped build, but they will
also be more willing to contribute if you make it profitable for
them to get involved.

2. Rethink the commons.

The paradox of today's age is this: to be strong, to have
control, to ensure your security as an organization or society, you
have to let go and open up. Organizations should abandon a
fortress mentality.

Why? Because sharing is about attaining growth, innovation and
profits. It is true that companies need to protect critical
intellectual property (IP), but at the same time they can often
grow more effectively by not hiding all of their IP. What might
initially sound like a potential threat to profit can, in fact, be
an opportunity for organizations to discover new grounds for
creativity.

There are many ways for an organization to “let go”: it could
mean

giving your employees more freedom and more flexibility to
innovate and co-create with their peers.

tapping into your suppliers and partners for ideas and
collaborating more closely on product design and
manufacturing.

sharing at least some of your assets with the public to expand
your reach or help attract a larger network of
contributors.

letting a loyal and engaged community of enthusiasts help grow
your brand.

In making the decision to outsource, organizations should
consider strategy as well as cost: Does having direct
ownership of your work confer any competitive advantage?

If so, keep that work in-house and make sure that those
responsible for the work are freed from lower-value tasks that
others could accomplish. But if there is a benefit, outsource that
work and make it open for any external help. (See The Logic of
Open Business Models).

Ultimately, to make sharing work, you’ll need to stay connected
to the community so you can leverage new contributions as they come
in, and also need to dedicate resources to filtering and
aggregating contributions.

3. Create a culture of collaboration.

The hardest challenge for anyone who wants to transform their
institution in the networked age is to deepen and broaden the
culture of collaboration. To make this work for you, you have to be
genuinely open to new ideas.

The first place to start with is your own workplace. Try to abandon
old hierarchies and encourage people to speak freely with one
another even if they are in different departments.

To turn your organization into a collaborative workplace, your
leaders also must recognize that collaboration is essential for
reaching common goals. They will have to set an example with their
own behavior and sustain momentum by relentlessly
communicating the need to collaborate and respect joint
efforts.

4. Find and strengthen the vanguard.

Collaborative communities never get off the ground without a
core group of leaders who establish the vision and community values
and attract more people to the ecosystem.

This small group can profoundly influence on the type of
community that evolves, especially since newcomers tend to model
their behavior on what they have already observed.
Communities that create things develop their own rules that govern
issues such as communications, appropriations, and the form and
manner of contribution.

Providing incentives certainly will help motivate the
vanguard to be successful. Let them expand gradually and tackle
collaboration as real work, not as a distraction.

Moreover, empower the group through its collective
intelligence by following the principles layed down in the
book “Wisdom of Crowds“, namely diversity of
opinion, independence, decentralization, and
aggregation.

Empowering Professional–Amateurs can also help; young
minds with a preference for collaboration can help organizations
innovate in how they recruit, compensate, develop, supervise
talent, and build a brand.

Unfortunately, most organizations and institutions do a pretty
poor job of engaging young people. Smart companies understand that
tools and platforms such as Facebook and other social media are
becoming the new operating system for their businesses. And these
tools come naturally to the new generation, like the air they
breathe.

Ahmad is the MEA regional manager for Techstars, Entrepreneurs in Residence at Aliqtsadi, and advisor at both Jusoor, and Techfugees. He has a blog that tackles the power of the sharing economy and wrote the book "Entrepreneurship In Conflict Zones." You can follow him on Twitter at @ahmadsb_.